General Question

Did I eat too much today? (trying to improve my eating habits)

I have been working out just fine lately, but I feell like my eating still needs more work. Not sure though, that is why I thought I would ask.

For example, today I had 1 cup of coffee with cream and 1tbsp of cane sugar for breakfast. A half turkey sub that I bought at a concession stand thing (had two small slices of cheese), bottle of apple juice, chocolate muffin (the worst thing I had today, it had about 300 cals), and a small strawberry banana smoothie for lunch through the evening. And then aprox. 1 cup yellow rice with hot sauce, and powder green tea for dinner. I feel like I have to stop here and just eat fruits if i get hungry…

Should I eat less than this if I want to LOSE weight? Would it have been okay if I just skipped that chocolate muffin? Or does this seem okay?

It doesn’t seem like an excessive amount of food to me, but how much you should be eating depends greatly on how active you are, what your current weight is, and how much you want to lose.
However, I will say, it seems like you’re eating a lot of sugar.

The only thing I would add is to try adding some vegetables. Fruit isn’t bad for you by any means, it’s just that the vegetables give you variety. And some of them will have more fiber and less sugar than the fruits. (Fruit sugar isn’t bad, I just try to avoid it after 4PM.)

Go to this site MyPyramid.gov . It is put together by the USDA and has the latest info and tools to help you make intelligent eating decisions.
You enter your height, weight, age, activity level, etc. and it will tell you how many calories you need to maintain your weight. Then you use the site to look up the foods you ate and determine the calories. It will also track vitamins, and nutrients.
Promise yourself you will spend about one hour looking around and learning – then do it.
Good luck.

Here’s a tip for you. When they ask “You want fries with that?”, the answer is: “No”.

You can also add some nuts and yogurt. Also if you have trouble sticking to a daily limit, give yourself a daily target and a weekly limit. That way you can miss once or twice in the week and not feel guilty.

Honesty, it seems like you’re not eating enough (especially for breakfast), and what you are eating is really unbalanced. I’d suggest focusing a little bit less on the quantity of food you’re eating, and focus more on the quality. You’d probably benefit from adding a bit more protein, vegetables, and fruits, and really cutting down on the sugar and bad carbs. Ditching some of the smoothies and bottled fruit juice for some water would really benefit you as well. Sure, you can lose weight by cutting way down on your overall calories, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making yourself healthier. Focusing on eating well will help you much more in the long run, and will help you keep off the pounds that you do lose.

Actually… you’re not eating nearly enough for your body to feel like it can let go of fat. You didn’t actually eat anything for breakfast, you’re lacking in protein (can’t build muscle without it), and you need more veggies. Your diet plan with your lack of calories might be making you hold onto the weight you’re trying to lose. That’s why starving yourself doesn’t work, your body goes into a mode where it thinks it has to hold on to fat because it obviously needs it to live off of until you find food again. Your smoothies (high in sugar, low in everything beneficial) are not a very healthy thing, you’d be better off with a lower sugar yogurt and would still be getting dairy.

There is nothing okay about your eating today if this is an example of a normal day. You need to seriously look at balancing your diet and worrying less about the things you see as unhealthy and more about other things that you think are fine (juice, smoothies, powdered green tea) but are actually screwing you more than the muffin. You need to focus more on getting enough calories to lose (join weight watchers for a month and learn about how much you need to be eating to lose if you need to) rather than trying to eat little to nothing.

You can cook a pack of chicken breast (cut it into slices) with a _little_soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper. This stuff gives i some flavor without adding much to it. This can be eaten by itself, made into a sandwich, put in with a pasta, put on a salad, whatever. It can be refrigerated, frozen, or used immediately. Its a healthy way to add protein and healthy calories to your diet for days without having to think much about it. There are a number of things like this even extremely busy people can do to improve their eating. Balance your diet